Women in America during a time of disfranchisement generally believed that voting rights were necessary in order to help enact social and political reforms within society. Documents A,E, G reflect the desire for women to be able to have the right to vote through women’s desire to improve public conditions in society, helping to raise their children, and enacting labor laws that would help women earn better wages and improve working hours.
Many women during the progressive era fought for many social reforms within their society. Most of the time it was very difficult to pass such reform proposals through legislation which ultimately resulted in having their husbands vote for them. In Colorado in 1893, state legislators passed a bill granting women suffrage to all of its female citizens, thus women were able to change their living conditions and vote on important issues. As expressed by Senator Owens in (Doc. A) he believes due to women being able to vote in the Colorado territory that women were able to help get laws passed that including reforms in prison systems, equal pay, sanitary …show more content…
Documents B,C,F reflect the opposition for women to be able to have the right to vote rooted in popular notions that women, despite their efforts could not change the social and political landscape of government, an immediate reversal in gender roles within the household, and that women were better off having men have complete control over the government for women's best interest in society on men’s behalf. Many believed in the idea that women were suitable for staying at home and were not well trained in their occupations, in addition to, believing that suffrage was simply not enough to change the important issues at that time. In (Doc. B) Gilbert Jones addresses women suffrage stating that even though women have received the right to vote in certain western territories of the U.S. no social reform has not occurred, so despite suffragists efforts of giving women the chance to vote it ultimately did not have much of an impact within changing laws. She states that women pay taxes despite not voting and women are not well trained enough in their occupation . From a more conservative sense she wants women to focus more on becoming more skilled in their traditional jobs by learning essential economic skills. Another popular conception among Anti-Suffragists felt that men were doing their best to actively run the